The SS tosses another man into the barrack like a feral cat, splattering to the ground, all four limbs stretched to the sides. With the metal door to the barrack opened, a glimpse of Stefan’s world flashes before my eyes. Life within the musky brick walls: rows of wooden bunks, stacked three high from wall-to-wall with men crammed into tight spaces, fitting as many bodies as possible.
The next man steps up to the x to be sprayed. Most of them take it in silence, but panic rises within this man’s eyes—pure adrenaline laced with terror. A loss of power. His guttural scream pierces my ears. The sound—it brings me back to Mama’s side, the look on her face, enduring death’s claws yanking her body away. That’sthelook. The one I’ll never forget. The indescribable one with a type of emotion I can’t name. It’s the look right before someone knows they’re going to die.
“Shut up!” a guard shouts, startling me back to this frigid moment. My eyes refocus just as a guard tosses the screaming man out of his path.
As the next cold figure steps forward, another approaches—an officer in a white medical coat draped over his SS uniform.A disconcerting smile unfurls as he clenches a clipboard in his white-gloved hand. His demeanor demands purpose for his presence. I can’t fool myself into thinking a white coat might offer a hoax of compassion. Even with a medical coat, he’s no different from any other member of the Reich.
“How are you doing, my friend?” he exclaims, his glee bubbling through each word as he greets Officer Weyman. “Another outbreak, I hear.” Laughter follows. I don’t find anything about typhus humorous.
“Yes, it appears to be so,” Officer Weyman says.
The doctor drops his free hand into his pocket and scopes out the never-ending line of men sprawled out before me.
“Who’s the lovely young lady?” he asks, nodding at me as if I’m nothing more than a statue.
Weyman gives me a side eye then glances back to the doctor. “Fräulein Kaufman. Midwife. Skilled in detecting sickness before it spreads. I’ve tested her accuracy. She rarely misses.”
“Is that right?” the doctor replies, tapping his finger against his chin. His stare makes me squirm.
“Yes, she’s plucking the diseased out of line before disinfecting them. There’s been about a dozen or so beyond what we spotted earlier in the day at the factory.”
“Brilliant,” the doctor says.
It takes everything inside of me not to peer over at Weyman and the doctor. I don’t know if they intend for me to overhear their conversation. I spray the next man, quickly, making sure there isn’t much time passing when I can’t hear the continuing conversation.
The next man to step up to the x-mark holds his fingertips against his temple, his face distorted with an edge of pain. He also has a small pink strawberry patch of skin along his right hip.
I drop my hose-clenching-hand down by my side and wait for a kapo to take the man away.
“One minute,” Officer Weyman says to the doctor before whistling at a comrade. The whistle is the only necessary signal before the ill man is taken from the line, without being disinfected.
The doctor’s brows rise as he inspects the man in passing. He nods. “Good eye. Good catch.”
“Yes, agreed,” Weyman says, clearing his throat.
“Well,” the doctor says, sweeping an invisible speck of lint from his coat, “in two weeks, once quarantine is complete, whoever is no longer ‘fit’ for labor—send them my way, yes? I can certainly make use of them.”
Two weeks.
Another quiet selection.
Between forced labor and what? Medical care?
I know better than to think that. He wants to “make use of them.”
“Of course,” Weyman replies with a firm nod. “Two weeks it is.”
“Wonderful. Marvelous.” He steps away from Officer Weyman and lifts a gloved hand in a mock wave at the line of men. “Take care of yourselves, gentlemen. Stay warm and hydrated. “Fräulein…” The doctor pauses, addressing me with a quick nod. “It’s been a pleasure.”
Weyman takes a step to the side, concealing the doctor’s view of me.
It isn’t protection.
The doctor strolls in a small circle before moving along, clipboard tucked beneath his arm, lips still curled into a snake-like grin. The next young man steps up in front of me, naked as the day he was born. He’s much younger than many of the others. Embarrassed because I’m a woman. He covers himself for an attempt at modesty. He still has youthful eyes. He’s someone’s child. A mother’s world.
He mouths the words, “please no, please no.” I don’t know what he’s pleading for—if he’s sick and doesn’t want me to notice or doesn’t want to be sprayed.
“I won’t let anything happen to your baby.”The words hauntingly echo in the back of my mind—words I spoke to Miriam when nothing was going right during her labor. I know better than to make promises I can’t keep, but it didn’t stop me.
